Eating a family meal together- tell this idiot how it works.....

[fustilarian]

Ok am I being really thick here?

This eating together as a family thing- do your children go to bed really late, or do you and DH eat dinner at 5pm?

I really want us all to eat together but can't figure out how (apart from breakfast). Do I just have to wait til LO is a teenager?

Am I missing the bleeding obvious?

We never get to eat all together apart from at the weekends.

Ds eats at about 5.30/6pm and is in bed at 7pm.
DH gets in from work at 8pm and we eat together about 9pm most nights.

We tend to eat Sunday dinner at 5pm ish so we can all eat together then. (although the baby ALWAYS starts crying when we do try and all sit down to eat lol)

We go through phases of this. Depends on timing and general effortfulness and who's in when. When DP's cooking their tea, he tends to feed them at 5.30ish. If it's me, I tend to hang on till 6.30ish and we eat together, but quite often that just doesn't work out, especially during the week.

I've stopped worrying about it.

I cannot, however, say that I have a particular urge for Romantic Dinners A Deux. Although I do yearn for food with more chilli than the Inferiorettes care for.

My children go to bed at 7 and DP gets in at 7.30 so we don't manage it in the week. At weekends we have lunch together and at tea time we sit with them and have a light snack when they have their dinner (and then eat later on our own) and on Sundays we all have a roast together.

i eat breakfast lunch and tea with mine during the week - they have tea at 5-5.30ish and i cook for us all then, DH has his warmed up when he gets in and kids are in bed at 8ish. They are aged 5 and 2
Sometimes it has been really hard as you are trying to feed them (relucant eater no. 2 is, grrr) and feed yourself but i do think it sets a good example about table manners etc (again No 2 doesn't seem to have picked up them yet, grrr).
At the weekend we all eat together.
V occassionally I'll do something separate for DH and me or we'll have a take away and the kids will have pasta